[Phillies_Joe]

Awesome...welcome back to the hobby and here at Beckett. Great bunch of folks with alot of knowledge here.

You may want to look at getting the online price guide here with the beckett subscription (just a thought). May make your search for product easier plus you can see some pictues of the cards which may narrow down what you may want to pick-up based on how they look. Anyway, have fun and maybe down the road we can swap some cards (that would blow my girls minds...making a shipment to France...LOL)

[richk]

You also might want to see if ANY sports items are produced specifically for the French Market and purchase them to use in trades with American collectors. If there is, for example, some sets issued after 1995 or so in France which feature basketball players you might have something interesting to trade.

Just a thought on helping us American collectors

Rich

[kblougou]

yes, I traded quite a lot of 93 and 94 Upper Deck basketball back in the days ! The Collector's Choice weren't as sought after, but the first couple of sets had high trade value (I remember trading a Shaq 93 card for the equivalent of 60$ worth of cards)
Fleer also dabbled in the market, but their cards were exactly the same as the US ones, save for the numbering.

[kblougou]

As I've found out, buying team lots off ebay can be frustrating...plenty of duplicates, mostly junk cards (and I mean...real junk cards), hardly anything from after 1992. And of course, I have to pay for S&H, so it's never cheap.

Got a 660 card lot, all blue jays, for 40$ (20$ + 20$ s&h). It said that there were stars and minor stars from 1980 to 2010.
1/3 were duplicates from 86-89 Topps and 90 Donruss, 1/3 were from the 80s and very early 90s (before gloss, thick cardboard and foil) and the last 1/3 was just not interesting at all. I blame only myself, the seller did his job, I should've asked for more details.

Just shows that the lack of free S&H can be a pain !

[richk]

KB -- PM me and we can work out something. I have large boxes of cards and can work out whatever you need wihtin reason and I'll get that out to you. And if you want team oriented material -- we can do that -- and if you like random -- I think you'll like what we do

Just PM me

[manningsecnumbr1fan]

Welcome back to the hobby!

[jcollyer]

Hi everyone,

after stopping for 16 years, I decided to start collecting baseball cards again. I suppose this happens frequently (aaah, nostalgia...), but because i live in France and always have, I wasn't confronted with any of the evolutions the hobby was going through. There are no card shows, no card shops (granted, in the US, there aren't too many left), no advertising. There is, of course, the internet, but if you don't browse those subjects, they won't land on your lap. I did follow baseball really closely though thanks to mlbtv.

So it's like waking up from a long sleep and having to discover and learn everything again. It's an exciting and very strange feeling ! I'm not writing anything everybody here doesn't already know, but man has everything changed since 1998. My mind can't even believe the number of sets that came out and the advent of memorabilia.

But I'm learning...I received the july issue of Beckett (I was a subscriber in the 90s), and even that is nothing like the magazine I was used to (I even went back to get backissues at my parents' to get back in the spirit of things !). It's always nice to have some valuable cards in my collection, but it's not my main focus, so I don't buy Beckett to know the value of my cards. Beckett is essentially usefull to me as a listing and for me to have a visual on the cards.

THe internet, of course, makes collecting cards way easier for me now. Before, I had to use mail orders or just wait to go spend the summer in the US. Quite frustrating !

so hi, my name's Kevin, I'm probably one of the only baseball cards collector in France, and I collect Blue Jays cards (my mom's from Toronto, in case you're wondering).

Welcome back, I am here in Germany and visit France a few times a year in the Britannia close to La Baule. Check out this site there are a few other chaps from France. http://www.dascardboard.eu/forum/index.php

[Odyssey]

Rad_1205, CrakumsGT, and myself are stationed in Germany and while we atleast have an American store on our base that carries limited quantities of baseball cards, we get the majority of our needs from ebay and buy hobby boxes from Dave and Adams and Blowoutcards online. It usually takes a while for our orders and our trades to go through but its how we have to do things.

Welcome back to the hobby and if theres anything you need help with you can message me.

[rad_1205]

Rad_1205, CrakumsGT, and myself are stationed in Germany and while we atleast have an American store on our base that carries limited quantities of baseball cards, we get the majority of our needs from ebay and buy hobby boxes from Dave and Adams and Blowoutcards online. It usually takes a while for our orders and our trades to go through but its how we have to do things.

Welcome back to the hobby and if theres anything you need help with you can message me.

+1

Collecting overseas can be a *****, but over the last couple years myself, odyssey and CrakumsGT have made it work. On top of it all there are some really good dudes on this site that are very easy to work with and understand our situation so they work with us.

Like odyssey said if you need any help or anything let me know as well.

[kblougou]

Thanks a lot guys !
The internet has definitely made things a loooooot easier, that's for sure

It's strange, I was under the impression that blowoutcards did not send overseas ? That's what they write in their FAQs